Gangbuster by Peter Bleksley Read Free Book Online

arrested for, and taken off to various police stations in the South of England where they were charged with drugs offences and sent to remand prisons to await their trials.
    Although Feviet and Locatelli, effectively the company chairman and managing director of this gigantic offshore venture, appeared to have slipped the net, we had enough evidence to issue an international arrest warrant. We’d managed to get photographic evidence of both men meeting up with Mills, including at Heathrow Airport, during the run-up to the Poseidon seizure. We had damning evidence from the surveillance teams. Locatelli was arrested a few weeks later at Madrid Airport for the Poseidon drugs shipment and a range of other drug-related offences. He was in the company of an Italian criminal court judge. I make no comment. Feviet was arrested later in connection with Poseidon, pleaded guilty in court andreceived what appeared to be a paltry four-year sentence. Then it emerged that Poseidon was just the tip of the iceberg. He was wanted in Canada for the illegal importation of six tons of cocaine. In cash terms, that dwarfed the six-and-a-half tons of puff we had seized. The value of the coke would have gone off the Richter scale in drug-trafficking terms – hundreds of millions. The Poseidon, it appeared, had also been used in that smuggling operation. It illustrated just what a top villain Feviet was and why it was so vital to hunt him down. He was duly extradited to Canada and is now serving a substantial prison sentence there. Having had his boat confiscated, his drugs seized and burned, hopefully Feviet will never reap the rewards of his criminal activities.
    A total of 18 people were arrested over Poseidon, and all but three were convicted and jailed in a series of trials lasting through until June 1995. A huge and sophisticated foreign drug cartel, with the UK as its principal target, had been taken out in what was hailed as one of the most successful joint operations ever between police and customs, a combination, I must say, that did not always sing from the same hymn sheet. With the unique involvement of the Royal Navy and SBS, it was a fantastic example of courage and cooperation in the face of the gravest danger.
    The trial judge at Croydon Crown Court, His Honour Judge Devonshire, was unstinting in his praise of the undercover officers, Customs and police, who had risked their lives in that petrifying drama on the high seas. He said the rivalry between police and Customs had often been commented on but, in Operation Dash, ‘it was uplifting to see the cooperation evident in this case.’ I’d certainly had someunfortunate run-ins with the Cuzzies over the years, and I was grateful to see a new era of collaboration.
    Customs boss Dick Browne was equally fulsome in his plaudits to Mick and Paul and the courageous roles they played. And in a letter to Commander Roy Clark of the South-East Regional Crime Squad, he noted how much humour our Team 12 had shown during the long months of surveillance leading up to the quayside ambush.
    ‘I would like to single out DI Chris Jameson,’ he wrote. ‘His enthusiasm and professionalism greatly impressed all of us here and we have come to regard him as a credit to SERCS and to the police service in general.’
    Mr Browne had heard that we’d never had a dull moment on the job. I won’t argue with that. And it still went on after the bad guys had been rounded up.
    We’d all suffered a bit from the sharp tongue and acid wit of Freddy Bateman and we decided collectively to get our own back on him once the dust had settled. We hatched a little plot. One of the guys on the team knew Freddy’s family quite well and said he had a daughter who was game for a laugh. So we sent Freddy down to the south coast on some spurious inquiry to get him out of the way. Then a team of us went round to his house with a video camera and filmed a Loyd Grosman-style Through the Keyhole. Who would live in a house like